Good morning and happy TV finale week! As the shows head off to their summer homes and the graduates to their parents’ basements to wait out the recession, our thoughts of nice spring things and vacations can officially begin. It’s a media-heavy Monday update this week because New York Times columnists have been being naughty, and icy, famous editors have come out in public to thaw. But stick around for the happy video at the end!

Maureen Dowd’s Sunday column plagiarized a paragraph from a post on Talking Points Memo about the timeline of torture and Iraq. The Times has issued a correction online, and, in an email to the Huffington Post, Dowd admitted that the “line” came from a conversation with a friend, who she didn’t know had taken it from TPM. But that hardly explains how the TPM writer’s entire paragraph appeared word-for-word in her column without attribution. Whatever happened here, MoDo definitely has it coming.

Also in acidic female journalist news, Vogue editrix Anna Wintour posed for 60 Minutes last night and explained, in her rarely-heard half-British, half-American accent, why she wears her sunglasses (“they’re armor”) and why she might, in fact, be a bitch (“if requiring excellence makes me a bitch, perhaps I am.”)

Pakistan is loading up on nuclear weapons faster than we can blink (shite!), and yet, incredibly, someone in the government—or a lot of someones—were considering giving them “billions” in military aid. What on earth is going on here?

The country survived graduation weekend without any major incidents: the President spoke at Notre Dame, where he talked about abortion and kind of admitted the divisions over it are irreconcilable. And wearing a metallic red cap and gown, Bristol Palin walked across the stage at Wasilla High School and collected her diploma. She finished with a 3.497 grade-point average. No word on Levi.

Speaking of abortion, the weekend news was filled with disclosures of conservatives’ no-longer-so-secret plans to block the President’s potential Supreme Court nominees. Gay marriage, several Republican senators said, has replaced abortion as the “flash point” of the confirmation hearings, and they plan to use the spectacle to encourage donations and unite the party.

23-year-old Alexander Rybak, universally and awkwardly described as a “boyish, fiddle-wielding Norwegian singer,” won Eurovision, the world’s biggest song competition held in Moscow on Saturday. A colossal event famous for its dramatic performances, stunts and pyrotechnics, was Eurovision was briefly visited by gay-rights protesters before Moscow police rounded them up. Rybak’s song “Fairytale,” which he performed while fiddling and dancing, took the top honor.

The Orlando Magic and Los Angeles Lakers both won their NBA playoff series last night and advanced to the Final Four.

A first look at this week’s magazines: New York’s cover story, by the always-amazing Sam Anderson, is a defense of distraction; The New Yorker has looks into Justice John Roberts’ stealthy judicial activism and an item on Todd Palin’s awkwardness; Newsweek debuts its new format with an exclusive interview with President Obama; the Weekly Standard profiles former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, who’s now running to be the next Republican governor of California.

Finally, we’re to the good part: this morning’s start-your-day video, a collaboration of Andrew Bird, comic book artist Chris Ware, and This American Life: the animated musical adventure of Quimby the Mouse and his strange pet … head.

After a brief hiatus/rainout last Friday, the Morning Gossip is back with everything that the good, the bad, and the ugly did over the weekend. We’ve been leaning toward the grim news side of things lately and, well, since there never is a ton of grim news first thing on Monday morning, what better way to get started than with some good, strong breakfast juice?

The top of the news this weekend was the White House Correspondents Dinner, which is kind of like an Oscar afterparty for politicos (i.e., star-studded but still stiff and stilted, thickly populated by olds and nerds. The attending Twitterati, incidentally, referred to the ordeal as the “nerdprom.”)

The correspondents’ dinner is the annual night where the President shoots arrows into his own buttocks in front of the glutted and inebriated press, and President Obama, unlike the warm-up comedian Wanda Sykes, benefitted from some sharp joke writers. Two fake teleprompters unfurled dramatically on the stage as he welcomed the audience to “the ten day anniversary of my first 100 days.” He continued to riff on Rahm’s potty mouth Michelle’s bare arms, and coyly suggested Dick Cheney title his memoir How to Shoot Friends and Interrogate People. See the full video here.

Even more entertaining was all the journos rubbing themselves against the collected stardom of D.C. and Hollywood, bursting with pertinent analysis and a landslide of Twitpics. The night had barely begun when Meghan McCain called it a “clusterf—-,” and Ana Marie Cox squealed when she met Gossip Girl stars Chace Crawford and Ed Westwick. The ever glam-hungry Daily Beast has all the further analysis you’ll need, here and here.

After the jump, the latest the British tabloids have on Michael Phelps, where Nancy Pelosi is hiding, and what movie – three guesses and the first two don't count! – topped the box office this weekend. Plus a quick roundup of what's in all of this week's magazines.

Every get that glazed-over feeling that you're reading the same news stories you read yesterday and the day before and maybe even last week? Well, it's not just you. Looking around the interwebs this morning, it's pretty clear that most of last Friday's stories – swine flu, Obama policies, Republican flailings, newspaper deaths – are all right where we left them. Even the naughty people in Hollywood didn't do anything interesting this weekend. So we present a truncated version of the Morning Gossip on this Newsless Monday:

Former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney became the latest prominent GOP member to take a public swipe at Sarah Palin, asking if Time's 100 Most Influential People list (on which Palin appeared) was "a list of the most beautiful people, or the most influential people?"

In case you've been wondering where they've hidden in the five years since American Idiot, Green Day are up to Even More Important Things: releasing an album in two weeks called – wait for it – 21st Century Breakdown. Considering that last one, it could be kinda good, you know. But when they're just talking, Billy Joe and Co. never get any less insufferable.

The New York Times Company is finally listening to the Atlantic: our town's biggest newspaper has filed federal documents notifying authorities that it will close The Boston Globe, leaving the capital of New England – and the Atlantic's former hometown – without its "storied" newspaper.

We know you don't want to hear a single further word about the Hipster Grifter, but at this point, why on earth not? And if you must hear something, might as well be the best news ever: she got arrested, and hopefully will be locked up out of all our dear blogger friends' sight.

Anyway. Seriously, nothing is happening today. Well, maybe this stuff. But nothing you can do anything about, so go in peace and have a wonderful, bad news-less day.